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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

melanie sweeney

Melanie Sweeney is the author of Birds as Leaves, a
nonfiction chapbook on motherhood forthcoming from The Lettered Streets Press
in May 2015. Her work has appeared in Mom Egg Review, Rougarou!,
Reunion: The Dallas Review, Foundling Review, and others. She holds an
MFA from New Mexico State University. She lives in Spring, Texas, with her
husband, son, and dog -- and soon twin girls. Connect with Melanie at melaniesweeney.com.

Tell us about your
relationship to your art.

I'm primarily a fiction writer. I
started writing stories when I was in elementary school, emulating the books I
read. I don't ever remember choosing to be a writer, though my first fiction
workshop in college was maybe the first deliberate step. From then on, writing
stories has been more of a compulsion, a way of grappling with what confounds
me about the world and myself, primarily themes like connection/disconnection,
belonging/not-belonging, and identity. Post-MFA, my relationship with writing
is thornier than it was when I was young. Though I have more tools and
direction now, it is far more challenging, not as purely fun as it used to be.
Maybe that's why the best feeling I get from writing is when I know something
technical is working, but I also feel energized by a moment in the work that is
unexpected and true.

What's a project (yours or another's) that has been exciting you lately?

I'm really excited about The Lettered
Streets Press and their split-volume chapbook series. They publish a single
volume that includes a prose chapbook by one author and a poetry chapbook by
another. This is the format for my own forthcoming chapbook with them, and I'm
so excited by the fact that I will share that space with another voice. For
readers, it has the potential to be a really rich and interesting experience,
how the works may cross the middle in terms of theme, image, etc. I like the
thought that the two parts are distinct, yet connected, which is an idea I
interrogate in my own work. Plus, it's nice to feel supportive of and supported
by another writer in such an intimate space.

Tell us a little of
your motherhood journey.

My son was born a week past his due
date. My health insurance expired the day before. In two weeks, I was supposed
to start a PhD program. Having just graduated from our MFA program, my husband
and I were unemployed, recently relocated, and burning through all our savings.
I'd loved being pregnant, the slow bloom, the magic. I guess that's why I
expected motherhood, despite how our lives were in upheaval, to be natural,
easy.

Labor itself was manageable, but the
baby's head was cocked at an odd angle, obstructing him. My midwives, my
husband, and my mother supported me through nearly four hours of pushing. When
I think of becoming a mother, it was there, in the final few hours of my labor,
when my body and my son's body were at the slightest of incompatible angles,
and no balance of controlling myself and letting go of control could free him.
Looking back, this misalignment was an apt metaphor for my motherhood. When a
final position change shifted our configuration just right, and he was born, it
felt like chance, not something I had done.

The days and weeks that followed
reinforced my sense of being out of control. We had multiple breastfeeding
issues, medical issues, colic. Our house, for a time, was infested with fleas.
I didn't start my PhD program because I felt far too overwhelmed, and I no
longer lived near old classmates, my writer friends. I was in some kind of
mourning. It took me a few months before I felt the first wave of breath-taking
love for my son.

The first year of my motherhood was
darker than anything I'd expected. But it got easier and richer over time. I
started walking with my son at a nearby botanical garden. I couldn't fit in
much formal writing time, but I wrote on my phone during naps, while my son
slept on me. When he started laughing, then interacting, then talking, walking,
I fell more and more in love with him. Moving my body in the world, returning
to my creative work, and feeling like my relationship with my son was less
one-sided all made a huge difference.

What are some crucial
elements of your process? How has that changed since having children?

I used to go to a cafe with my laptop
or pen and paper and write for three or four hours. As a grad student, I had a
lot freedom and flexibility. My husband and I were in classes together, on
campus together, at readings together a lot, so it wasn't a problem for me to
be gone like that, sometimes late at night.

As a stay-at-home mother with no
babysitter or outside care for help, I don't get to go to cafés much anymore.
My husband is very supportive of my work and wonderfully involved as a father,
but when he's home, I am often torn between spending time with him and working.
(After working and studying together for years, it is still weird to not see
each other throughout the day.) My son has always had sleep trouble, so even
now that he's nearly two, I lie with him for his nap and at night. I use this
time to write the only way I can--flat on my back, in the dark, child sprawled
across me, typing on my phone (as I am now). When I get to take an hour to myself,
I write in the same big bed, albeit sitting up with my laptop, because driving
to a cafe wastes time, and because our home office doesn't have doors. I used
to think my process was rigid and that I needed everything just so. I've
learned that the creative mind can usually find a way with even the stingiest
limits.

What are some
of the ways your family and your art interact?

Most of my writing, as I've said,
happens with my toddler on top of me, the rest in my home while my husband
creates time and space for my solitude, so my family is inextricable from my
process. But I also found, following childbirth, that fiction was difficult to
write. I began writing from my life. Since I composed on a 4-inch phone screen,
feeling boxed in and unable to see a bigger picture, I primarily wrote short
pieces. I ended up with about a hundred manuscript pages this way, a sort
of beastly essay in fragments about motherhood, sexuality, nature, swimming,
and writing, which will be condensed and published as a chapbook next
year. My experience as a mother gave me both the content and the form for my
work.

Do you find your
attitude towards your art might be different because of your parenting / has it
changed since you became a parent?

My attitude has become more complicated
than it once was. I used to subscribe to a general belief in writing all the
time in order to evolve, to complete projects, to be serious about my work. I
write for fewer than ten hours a week now. Sometimes I really miss the old days
of marathon writing sessions. Sometimes I hesitate to start a project, or I cut
ideas off short because they don't feel like a solid enough gamble. I have less
patience for the mess of writing--the unknown elements of it, the endless,
seemingly directionless revision--even though I know the mess is where my best
work comes from. But I also have a less narrowly focused life now, which allows
me to step away from my writing and experience the world. I relish my writing
time. It doesn't consume me as it once did, which is at once discomforting and
a relief.

Are your children
ever subjects in your art?

My son is a main thread of my
nonfiction chapbook, although the work is more about me. Because it deals with
postpartum depression and motherhood intersected with my identity, it was
unavoidable to include him. I wrote most of it in the moment, too, so I would
write something like, "I want my son not to exist for three hours,"
and I felt guilty. But the hugest change I experienced as a new mother was the
conviction to be honest about my experience. I never used his name in my work,
which I never deliberately decided to do. Still, I reconciled fairly easily
with writing about my son. When he's older and actually responsible for his
behavior, I may feel differently.

Aside from the
obvious need of more time, what has been one of the most difficult obstacles
you’ve had in regards to parenting and your art?

It took me awhile to see that my
writing on motherhood was more than a personal project. I wanted my fiction to
be my main work. I sensed a lesser degree of respect for mothers who write
about mothering. I've learned to embrace this theme now, both in my nonfiction
and in my fiction. It is my strongest work to date and feels the most
important. Along with valuing this work came my willingness to ask for
what I needed from my husband, and we’ve recently established a more consistent
schedule for me to write alone.

In turn, what are
some of the saving graces?

When I wasn't sure what exactly I was
writing or could write with my motherhood fragments, I read several other
mother-writers: Adrienne Rich, Jane Lazarre, Sylvia Plath, Carmen Giménez
Smith, Carole Maso. Poetry, essays, journals, stories by mothers. I read books
and essays as well on postpartum depression, maternity-related legislative
policy, motherhood myths, reproductive rights. These little trails out from my
own experience have shed so much light inward in addition to expanding my
interests and my empathy. I felt less alone but also validated. I began to feel
much more connected to others through my experience, which was a great relief.
This identity, mother, sometimes felt like shackles, but I ended up
belonging within a beautiful community.

How do you escape?

Rarely do I truly escape. I escape when
I write and read. I also walk regularly for exercise. This is with my son in a
stroller, so it's not alone, but something about getting outside, focusing on
movement, and being with him in a more parallel capacity is restorative and
close to the solitude I crave.

What advice do you
have for expectant mothers in your field?

Talk to mothers who don't speak
exclusively in platitudes. The best support I received was from moms who were
willing to say, "Been there. It sucked," or "Here's how I messed
up." I felt often that I was struggling far more than other mothers, but I
know this was partly because people around me were constantly assuming that I
felt blissful, that motherhood came naturally, that I was fulfilled enough from
my infant to overlook other huge shifts in my life. So, honest, encouraging
support. If those are also mothers who understand the particulars of your
field/job, even better.

If you have less time, energy, or
access for creating your own art, consider if there is a way to at least
experience others' art, to keep you stimulated and connected. Reading was often
easier than writing for me, and it influenced my work in wonderful ways.

If you have a partner and/or other
supportive people to offer you time and space, or whatever it is you need for
your art, ask them. It can be hard, and sometimes it feels like you are
shifting a burden on to them, particularly partners I think, but it is equally
a burden to stifle and put off the work that is central to your identity. Art
can be restorative and healing. Making room for that is likely to make you a
better mother.